FILE PHOTO: The endangered dusky gopher frog, a darkly colored, moderately sized frog with warts covering its back and dusky spots on its belly, is shown in this undated handout photo obtained by Reuters January 22, 2018. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service/Handout via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS IMAGE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY./File Photo - RC196867F180
Supreme Court Sides with Landowners in Dispute Over Frog Habitats
The Supreme Court has sided with Mississippi landowners who were unable to clear trees off their land due to laws in place to protect the habitat of the Dusky Gopher Frog, according to a report by The National Review.
SCOTUS overturned a lower-court law that protected the habitat of the frogs from when Weyerhaeuser Co. grew timber there.
The article read:
The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which initially ruled against the landowners, must now revisit the case and reconsider the definition of “habitat,” in light of the High Court’s determination that a tract of land can only be properly defined as the habitat of a certain species if that species resides on the land.
Attorneys for the Weyerhauser Co. argued that their client’s land “concededly contains no dusky gopher frogs and cannot provide habitat for them absent a radical change in the land use because it lacks features necessary for their survival.”
The government has argued that the frogs could be relocated to various pods for survival, as only about 100 still exist due to habitat loss.
Courtney Ingle
